Another weekend, another afternoon spent at the wrong end of the grid. Aston Martin came away from Barcelona pointless, Fernando Alonso eliminated in qualifying and then halted by a battery failure on what could be his last home race — and the strain is no longer hidden.
"It's weighing on everyone," conceded Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack. "You can feel it in the garage, you can feel it especially with the drivers. It's a very difficult situation. On the other hand, we have a strong leader, and the decision was made to upgrade then, and it's for all of us to commit to that decision, even if it's difficult."
The leader in question is Adrian Newey, who decided early in 2026 to skip incremental updates and funnel everything into one large upgrade package later in the year. It is a gamble with no safety net. Until that package lands, the AMR26 stays what AutoRacing1 bluntly labelled a "lemon" — a machine the drivers must fight at the back while the rest of the grid keeps improving.
The gap is startling. "You always learn new things, crazy as it might sound when you are between three and four seconds off, like you are driving in a different category," Krack said of the Barcelona weekend. "But still, you learn a lot."
What clearly stung most was letting the crowd down. "I feel sorry for all the fans in green shirts in the grandstands, in the paddock," he said. "There were many. When we drove in and out it was so nice to see all these people with the green shirts, and we could not give them anything to cheer about."
Alonso, linked once more with Alpine and his veteran manager Flavio Briatore, chose to rally his team rather than feed the rumour mill. "We need to stay together, for sure," said the Spaniard. "That point in Monaco proves that we are not giving up today. Even if we were at the back of the grid, we were able to finish the race and take whatever opportunity came at the end with Safety Cars, or whatever."
That solitary Monaco point is one of few positives in a campaign built around limiting the damage. On the Alpine talk, Spanish daily AS reported that those close to Alonso see no firm sign he intends to walk, suggesting any move would read less as an upgrade than as a "wake-up call for an ambitious project, led by a genius, that urgently needs a change in direction."
That is the knot Aston Martin must untie this summer. Newey's standing earned him the licence to bet on one big swing instead of many small ones, and every race without the upgrade makes the wager look heavier. Krack keeps coming back to the same message — back the plan, commit to it. Whether the delayed parts lift the team out of "a different category" will decide whether the wait was foresight or obstinacy.
